Yes they are, in fine print in the physician's handout.
And maybe some doctors brief their patients, but the norm is "you need to take this, it will help you avoid the flu."
(As a side note, I've actually had doctors tell me not to read the PDR, the Merck Manual, or the physician's handouts on drugs/vaccines...imagine that?)
What other modern technology are you opposed to? Do you use a cell phone? Are there side effects?
First of all, I am NOT opposed to vaccination.
I am a skeptic of giving kids 284 vaccines by the time they are 3 weeks old (fake numbers given for a point).
I am a skeptic of thinking that vaccination is the be all and end all. Take Gardasil as an example. The solution to HPV is to live your sexual life according to Scripture, not taking shots with as many side effects as has been reported with Gardasil.
Again, let me stress: I am not anti-vaccination when it is called for. (For me PERSONALLY) I am against it as a general purpose prophylactic. But I'm also against taking any kind of medication unless it's absolutely necessary.
Many years ago during a physical my doctor wanted to put my on blood pressure medicine and statins. I didn't want to think about going on those meds, so I made a bargain with my doctor: give me 6 months and if I'm still showing the symptoms, I wouldn't argue. So I lost weight, started eating healthier, started a vigorous exercise program, and so on. BP dropped to normal, cholesterol levels got back to where they should be, etc. And, well, a decade later, still no need for statins or BP meds.
The point being that the solution was fixing something, not medicating around it.
My attitude toward vaccines is similar: yes, if you're in a situation where you need them, by all means the benefits outweigh the risks. You go to the jungle, you'd be an idiot not to take Yellow Fever and Cholera shots. And so on.
As far as other modern technologies:
Of course I use a cell phone. And I am well aware of the side effects of electromagnetic radiation (I worked on high powered [>10KW output] upper-UHF and SHF transmitters for years). I've actually seen people made sterile and note a higher increase of cancer among my peer group from people who weren't pretty careful around that environment. The running joke among my peers is that our sperm glows in the dark.
Unvaccinated children get sick at much higher rates—check the stats in 3rd world countries. The unvaccinated sick children spread the disease to others. The goal of public health is to prevent and control epidemics. We in the U.S. are not part of the 3rd world and we should not mimic their behavior.
3rd world children get sicker than most 1st world children primarily because of lousy sanitation and poor or nonexistent quarantine practices...there is an aggressive vaccination program administered by WHO throughout the 3rd world so lack of vaccination as an excuse is actually decreasing.
The real solution to third world diseases happening in this country is more closely related to proper public health practices than anything else. One of the biggest causes of hepatitis is using untreated human manure as fertilizer and then not washing the veggies before eating them. (To say nothing of infected third world restaurant employees not washing their hands after taking a crap). The solution to that is to make sure that human waste is thoroughly pasteurized before using it as fertilizer, to make sure that people know to wash their veggies and HOW to wash their veggies, and quarantining people who have the disease until it's out of their system.
Ok. Indeed, proper sanitation is one of the many tools used to protect public health, just as vaccines are. We have pretty darned good sanitation practices here in the U.S. yet we now have West Nile, Zika, and Chinkengunya on our shores. Not all parents with autistic children blame vaccines either. Many of the millions of affected children around the world have never seen a vaccine. There are myriad other mental illnesses that have no connection to vaccines besides autism, it is just that when one has an affected child there must be something that must be blamed for their sad misfortune. There is a clear familial prevalence with autism.